Life Is Not a Stage by Florence Henderson (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📕

still have). I loved the telegram sent to Ezio from my idol and friend Mary Martin, who was starring as Peter Pan at the time—“I hope that your Fanny is bigger than my Peter.” Other memories you wish you could forget, like the congratulatory kiss (“Why is this man putting his tongue in my mouth?”) by the famous writer S. N. Behrman, who cowrote the show with Josh Logan. Most of the reviews were good, while some were mixed, but when all was said and done we knew we had a big hit on our hands. It would go on to run for 888 performances.

About three weeks into the run, I made my first solo on-camera appearance, on Ed Sullivan. I had performed live on national television a few times before, but only as part of a duet. The situation exposed a deeper reality about being in the business. I was terrified at the thought that all of a sudden there would be millions of people watching. I thought I was going to pass out minutes before my turn. No doubt the greater pressure of knowing how important this exposure was to the show took me over the top. It was something to get used to, this new feeling of responsibility for the show, because I was in the lead role, a feeling I had been immune to in my beginning days in Oklahoma! If I didn’t end up fainting first, my next question was—would my voice come out when I opened my mouth to sing? I was still not twenty-one and didn’t drink alcohol, but in retrospect, a little slurp of something just before might have helped. Some of the major talk shows put booze in the dressing rooms for that very reason, to encourage guests to loosen up their inhibitions (and tongues) a little before their turn in the hot seat. I was still very much in panic mode during the performance, but mercifully I got through it well enough to be welcomed back for more appearances over the coming years.

Walter Slezak ended up winning the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical in the role of Fanny’s older husband, Panisse. Walter could be intimidating and frequently such a hog onstage, but I liked him and learned how to deal with him. No one else gave me a more thorough education in the art of upstaging. Upstaging sounds like exactly what it means. Let’s say you and I are doing a scene together, looking at each other as we normally would but standing in such a way that we’re both facing toward the audience. Suddenly you decide to take a step back toward the back of the stage. In order to continue the conversation and look at you, I am forced to turn my back to the audience. A few moments later, I take a step back in order to reposition myself in the original posture. But guess what? You take another step back, and I am forced to turn my back to the audience again. This dance continues until we’re literally about to bump up against the back wall of the stage. That’s what Walter liked to do.

Another one of Walter’s quirks was that usually he kind of took it nice and easy with his performance on any given night. But if he knew that there was somebody famous or important in the audience (which he always wanted to know), then he truly ramped up the voltage. It was a challenge playing against someone when you were never quite sure whether the performance was going to be on or off. This predicament came to a head over one particular line. Walter complained that he was losing the audience’s laugh and blamed me for it.

“You know, you have to do this, because I’m losing my laugh,” he told me.

My new assertive and assured self answered back, “Walter, if you did it the same way twice, that wouldn’t happen. You’re always changing it. That’s why it doesn’t work.” He kept going on like a broken record, until finally I said, “If you have a problem, go to the stage manager, and I’m sure he’ll straighten it out for us.” That seemed to do the trick. It was nice how a little boundary setting created mutual respect. We never had another problem from that point forward.

The other lead, Ezio Pinza, was a total joy and a wonderful man. There was something so charismatic and irresistibly attractive about him. He loved to tease me. With his wonderful Italian accent, he said, “Oh, Florence, when she gets married, she won’t take her husband to bed; she will take him to church.” Ezio was having a serious affair with a beautiful young girl in the show. When we caught a glimpse of his wife as she came down the alley toward the stage door after a matinee, we would have to go into high alert to give him the cease-and-desist signal. Years later, I did a Merv Griffin Show, and he asked me about my memories of Ezio. I told how wonderful I thought he was, but added in a loving and humorous spirit how you had to protect your backside around him. “Ah, bella,” he would exclaim when he pinched “Fanny’s” fanny. Well, I got a letter from his wife. “How dare you talk about Ezio that way,” blah, blah, blah. Ezio had passed away a few years earlier, but I walked into the middle of live crossfire. I told Julann Griffin, my friend who was married to Merv at the time, about the letter. She said, “You didn’t pinch his fanny. He pinched your fanny. And that’s the truth.”

One other fun thing about doing Fanny was you never knew who might be outside knocking on your dressing room door. Josh Logan had directed Picnic and brought its star Kim Novak to see the show. I had this preconceived image of her as being this sultry, sexy woman, but in